Use of the Internet to retrieve health information is increasingly. Young adult search the Internet for health information more than any other group. The authors surveyed 789 undergraduate students at 12 academic institutions to examine their Internet use. This research intended to investigate the usage of web health information through structural questionnaires based on intention sampling from the Taiwanese undergraduates, including those who study after work. The amounts of returned questionnaires are summed up to 789 excluded those unanswered item of gender, age, and departments. This research used SPSS/PC10.0 as the statistic software. There are 520 females ¡]65.9%¡^ and 267 males¡]34.1%¡^ in the study¡FThe youngest one is 19 and the oldest is 55 while the average age is 22.7 years old and the standard error is 4.71.¡FThere are 385 students in health related departments ¡]48.8%¡^ and 404 students are in non-health related ones ¡]51.2%¡^. The main result of research is that almost 90% Taiwanese undergraduates started to use internet and E-mail before high school ¡FMost of them use internet at home ¡]91.8%¡^and the purpose is to search non-varsity work related information ¡]61%¡^.
The main channel for these undergraduates to obtain health-related information is through radio station ¡]64.6%¡^while the internet placed the second choice¡]49.4%¡^. As to health information, there are 65.7% undergraduates have used the internet to search health information, there are high correlation between whether or not they use the internet and the students¡¦ age and departments, women has higher utilization rate than men and also non-health department has the same results. Those who ever use internet for health information are much more worried about the accuracy of internet health information than those who never use it. The non-health department students were anxious about using the internet for health information will lead to the ignorance of other ways to search health information. These students browse the internet at least once a month mainly for exercise or body-building information and then diet and nutrition. Women and health-related department perform higher rate on browsing frequency of internet health information than men and non-health related ones.
The main reason for the willingness to use the internet as the tool to understand health information of these students is the facility of searching through internet. Compared with none-health related department students, health-related ones are much more willing to choose internet because they can obtain the information anonymously. For those who ever use internet health information, clearly classification of website information which met their need will be the first consideration, they also ask for the writers¡¦ profession at the same time. Therefore, these students conceptually have the ability to evaluate health information on internet. The health related department students will even address their questions or suggestions when they have problems with the information on internet. There are more than 70 percent of students agree that using internet health information have positive influence on them.
It is a pity that only 107 students have ever browsed the health department websites of county or city government which are trusted by the public. There are only 63 students know the prompted of excellent mark for health information website by the department of health executive Yuan. However if they got the chance to see the mark of ¡§this website were appraise of excellent health information website by the department of health executive Yuan,¡¨ they will take great value on it and visit with high frequency.
Finally, it is suggested that non-health related department should emphasize more on the propaganda of health information to the department with high proportion of male students, and to provide better environment to complement the regardless ness of health information among undergraduates. The government should also emphasize on promote excellent health information website and improve the proportion of access the website of health department in order to bring out better outcomes.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:NSYSU/oai:NSYSU:etd-0905106-012029 |
| Date | 05 September 2006 |
| Creators | Huang, Kuan-ying |
| Contributors | Shu-Chuan Jennifer Yeh, Hung-Yi Chuang, HSIN-CHIA HUNG |
| Publisher | NSYSU |
| Source Sets | NSYSU Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Archive |
| Language | Cholon |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.lib.nsysu.edu.tw/ETD-db/ETD-search/view_etd?URN=etd-0905106-012029 |
| Rights | unrestricted, Copyright information available at source archive |
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